“...Mrs. Erskine, a very religious Protestant, good soul, would perhaps have liked to make a Protestant of me: she brought me the Bible, talked about the soul, quoted the Psalms to me; she was religious, poor thing, but she was greatly concerned about my soul. She was always telling me that the other world is better than this one; and I knew all by heart, and answered with quotations from Scripture and explained that I understood and knew about it.”
Chopin, writing in a letter about Mrs. Erskine, the sister of his student Jane Stirling.
“Let me die. Do not keep me longer in this world of exile. Let me die; why do you prolong my life when I have renounced all things and God has enlightened my soul? God calls me; why do you keep me back?”
Chopin, to his doctors, before his death.
“God shows man a rare favor when He reveals to him the moment of the approach of death; this grace He shows me. Do not disturb me.”
Chopin, to his doctors, before his death.
“O lovely science, that only lets one suffer longer! Could it give me back my strength, qualify me to do any good, to make any sacrifice—but a life of fainting, of grief, of pain to all who love me, to prolong such a life—O lovely science!”
Chopin, to his doctors, before his death.
“You let me suffer cruelly. Perhaps you have erred about my sickness. But God errs not. He punishes me, and I bless him therefore. O, how good is God to punish me here below! O, how good our God is!”
Chopin, to his doctors, before his death.
“I am already at the Source of Happiness!”
Chopin's last words, as he took a cross and placed it upon his heart.
“I love God and man.”
Chopin, shortly before his death.
“Play Mozart, and I will hear you.”
Chopin, requesting Mozart's Requiem to be played at his funeral.
“Now is my final agony. No more.”
Chopin, shortly before his death.
“Art is the respiration of a civilization.”
Chopin
“Music is the divine way to tell beautiful, poetic things to the heart.”
Chopin.
“After love, music is the best solution to any problem; it feeds the heart with what it needs in the moment.”
Chopin.
“Concerts are never real music, you have to give up the idea of hearing in them all the most beautiful things of art.”
Chopin, to his piano students.
“Put all your soul into it; play the way you feel!”
Chopin.
“Mould the keyboard with a velvet hand. And feel the key rather than striking it. Since each finger is individually shaped, it is best not to seek to destroy the particular charm of each, but... to develop it. As many different sounds as fingers.”
Chopin, describing to his students the proper touch of the piano.
“When the eyes can see neither notes nor keys, only then does the hearing function with all its sensitivity.”
Chopin, telling his students that once they knew a piece from memory, they should practice it all night in the dark.
“Fingers of steel. Wrist of silk.”
Chopin.
“Simplicity is the final achievement. After one has played a vast quantity of notes and more notes, it is simplicity that emerges as the crowning reward of art.”
Chopin.
“Once again I repeat - don’t play more than two hours a day; that is quite enough during the summer.”
Chopin, writing in a letter to a student.
“Everything must be made to sing!”
Chopin, to his students.
“I believe!”
Chopin, on his deathbed, when asked by his childhood priest, Father Jelowicki, whether he still believed.
“I have never in my life written another such beautiful chant.”
(“I have never in my life written another such beautiful song/melody.”)
Chopin to his pupil and copyist, Adolphe Gutmann, referring to his Étude, Op. 10 no. 3.
“O, me [sic] patrie!”
(“O, my fatherland!”)
Chopin lifting his arms with his hands clasped and exclaiming to his pupil and copyist, Adolphe Gutmann, when the latter was studying the former's Étude, Op. 10 no. 3.
“I hope I won’t write anything as dreadful too soon.”
Chopin, referring to his Tarantelle, Op. 43
“My Life, If any of you can, please come…”
Chopin, writing in a letter to his sister Ludwika, 25 June, 1849.
“All my friends and all the people who care for me believe that Ludwika’s arrival here is the best cure.”
Chopin, writing in a letter, before his death.
“I am sorely in need of money. The people are crafty here. When they don't want to do something they save themselves by going to the country. One of my pupils left without paying me for nine lessons.”
Chopin, referring to his students which he taught during his stay in England.
“It’s a huge Carthusian monastery, stuck down between rocks and sea, where you may imagine me, without white gloves or hair curling, as pale as ever, in a cell with such doors as Paris never had for gates. The cell is the shape of a tall coffin, with an enormous dusty vaulting, a small window...Bach, my scrawls and waste paper - silence - you could scream - there would still be silence. Indeed, I write to you from a strange place.”
Chopin, writing in a letter from Majorca.
“What a repulsive person le Sand is. Is she even a woman? I'm highly inclined to doubt it.”
Chopin, referring to the often cigar-smoking, often pant-wearing, and often bad-doing author Aurore Dudevant, with the male pseudonym "Georges Sand".
“‘Passeport en passant par Paris à Londres’”
(“'Passport in passing from Paris to London'”)
Chopin, jokingly quoting the inscription on his passport to his friends, which he used to get into Paris.
“I loves oo, too, times a billion...”
Chopin, writing in a letter to his family, and joking about a girl, a toddler, who had lisped to him, "I love you".
“Boże, jesteś ty! — Jesteś i nie mścisz się!...— Ach, czemuż choć jednego Moskala zabić nie mogłem! A ja tu bezczynny, a ja tu z gołymi rękami, czasem tylko stękam, boleję na fortepianie, rozpaczam — i cóż nada[l]? — Boże, Boże. Wzrusz ziemię, niech pochłonienie [!] ludzi tego wieku. Niech najsroższe męczarnie dręczą Francuzów, co nam na pomoc nie przyszli.”
„I wrote the previous pages not knowing that the enemy had entered the house. Suburbs destroyed —burned — Jaś! — Wiluś at the ramparts, most likely perished — I can picture Marcel taken prisoner — dear old Sowiński in the hands of those rogues!
Oh God, do you exist? You are here, and yet you do not take vengeance! Did you not have enough with the Moscow crimes? Or…Or perhaps you are a Muscovite! ...— Ah, why couldn't I kill at least one Muscovite! And here I am idle, and here I am with my bare hands, sometimes I only groan, I ache at the fortepiano, I despair - and what will that do? — God, God. Move the earth, let it consume [!] the people of this age. Let the most severe torments torment the French who did not come to our aid....How strange! This bed on which I shall lie has been slept on by more than one dying man, but today it does not repel me! Who knows what corpses have lain on it and for how long? But is a corpse any worse than I? A corpse too knows nothing of its father, mother or sisters or Tytus. Nor has a corpse a sweetheart. A corpse, too, is pale, like me. A corpse is cold, just as I am cold and indifferent to everything. A corpse has ceased to live, and I too have had enough of life. …Why do we live on through this wretched life which only devours us and serves to turn us into corpses? The clocks in the Stuttgart belfries strike the midnight hour. Oh how many people have become corpses at this moment! Mothers have been torn from their children, children from their mothers - how many plans have come to nothing, how much sorrow has sprung from these depths, and how much relief!... Virtue and vice have come in the end to the same thing! It seems that to die is man’s finest action - and what might be his worst? To be born, since that is the exact opposite of his best deed. It is therefore right of me to be angry that I was ever born into this world! Why was I not prevented from remaining in a world where I am utterly useless? What good can my existence bring to anyone? …But wait, wait! What's this? Tears? How long it is since they flowed! How is this, seeing that an arid melancholy has held me for so long in its grip? How good it feels - and sorrowful. Sad but kindly tears! What a strange emotion! Sad but blessed. It is not good for one to be sad, and yet how pleasant it is - a strange state…”
What Chopin, according to legend, was writing in his diary from Stuttgart, about his grief over the crush of the November Uprising back in his homeland, and his fear for the lives of his friends and family, 5 November 1830.
“All this has caused me much pain. Who could have foreseen it?”
Chopin
“I curse the moment of my departure.”
Chopin, referring to his departure from his native Poland.
“It should be like dreaming in sweet springtime. By moonlight.”
Chopin, referring to his Larghetto from Piano Concerto Op. 21.
“O, Momma, they all were only looking at my lace collar.”
Chopin, to his mother after she asked her nine-or-eight-or-seven-year-old son what piano piece the audience liked best.
“Liszt would be better as a diplomatist!”
Chopin, writing in a letter about how he encountered an ambassador to a German-speaking region, who knew practically no German.
“Bring me the Hungarian by force.”
Chopin, referring to Liszt.
“I wish to rob him of the way he plays my studies.”
Chopin, referring to his Études, and to Liszt.
“I sometimes worry - I hope that God will give him what he needs. But I hope he won't be cheated; though, on the other hand - fiddle faddle, cuckoo. That's the greatest truth in the world! And as long as that is as it is...”
Chopin, writing in a letter.
“You're a hellish monster. I embrace you.”
Chopin, writing in a letter.
“I can't spend the evening with you because of a superboring strange dinner without even truffles.”
Chopin, writing in a letter to his friend Wojciech Grzymała.
“We hug each other and hug again; what more can we do; what a pity we are not all together. But, but, it's wonderful! How good God is to us! I'm writing all anyhow; it's better not to try to think today; just to be happy...”
Chopin, writing in a letter.
“Have a bunch of violets bought on Friday so that the sitting-room may smell sweet.”
Chopin, writing in a letter.
“...memoirs. And, indeed, it would be too early for that; for dear Madame Sand will yet pass through strange things in life, before she grows old; many beautiful and many ugly things will befall her.”
Chopin, writing in a letter.
“You can give Jasio for lunch, from me, a sphinx's beard and a parrot's kidney's in tomato sauce sprinkled with eggs of the microscopic world. And you yourself can take a bath in an infusion of whales, to restore you after all my...”
Chopin, writing in a letter.
“If it bores you to copy them, do it for the remission of your great sins, for I don't want to give this spider's web to any hack copyist. Once more, I rely on you; for if I had to write out those 18 pages once more, I should go mad.”
Chopin, writing in a letter. to his copyist.
“It seems to me somewhat queer that you should be occupied with wheat; but I believed it because I know how you like to...”
Chopin, writing in a letter.
“What a pity that I can't post myself to you instead of this letter.”
Chopin, writing in a letter.
“The children came downstairs to remind me to send messages from them; and please tell them that I forgot.”
Chopin, writing in a letter.
“I embrace you. Yours till death - Write and may God guard you.”
Chopin, writing in a letter.
“Enough of this nonsense; forgive me, dear; as always, I've written I don't know what to you.”
Chopin, writing in a letter.
“Don't curse us, for we bless you; and give me an honest Polish kiss. Your F. CH.”
Chopin, writing in a letter.
“...work of another one, and found it so unpleasant, that he - died. What I have left is just a big nose and an underdeveloped 4th finger. You are a worthless person if you don't write me a line...”
Chopin, writing in a letter.
“...concertos, and Mrs. Dulcken, a famous - hm! - pianist here, played one here last year...”
Chopin, writing in a letter.
“from an ignoramus to an ignoramus”
Chopin, the "dedication" of his arrangement of the chorus of the Mazurek Dąbrowskiego.
“My dearest Parents and Sisters!
...
Yesterday I went to the imperial library with Kandler. You must know that I have long wished to acquaint myself with what is perhaps the richest collection of old musical manuscripts; but I never got round to it. I don't know whether the Bologna library is kept in better and more systematic order; but conceive of my astonishment when, among the manuscripts, I see a book in a case, with the name: Chopin. Rather thick, and in a good binding. I think: I never heard of any other Chopin. There was a Champin; so I supposed it might be his name misspelt, or some such thing. I take it up, look; my hand. Haslinger has presented the manuscript of my Variations to the library. — 'Geez,' I say to myself; — 'you have found something to keep!'
Last Sunday there were to be big fireworks, but it fell through on account of rain. It's a queer thing: when there are to be fireworks the weather is nearly always bad. In this connection I will give you an anecdote: A certain gentleman had a fine tan coat; but every time he put it on, it rained. Though he seldom wore it, he scarcely ever came home with it dry. So he goes to the tailor and asks him: why? The tailor puzzles over it, shakes his head; then asks to leave the coat a few days to be experimented on ; he is not yet sure whether the trouble may not sometimes be caused by the hat, the boots or the shirt. Not a bit: the tailor puts on the coat, goes out; it rains buckets; the poor fellow had to go home in a cab, having forgotten his umbrella. A more plausible version, according to many persons, is that the tailor's wife had gone to drink coffee with a cousin or friend, and had taken the umbrella. However it happened, the tailor got wet, the coat was damp; there was nothing for it but to wait till it got dry again. After waiting some time, it occurs to the tailor to rip up the coat; there might be an imp inside it that draws the clouds. A grand thought! He rips the sleeves: — nothing. He rips the skirts: — nothing. He rips the breast: inside the lining is a fragment of an announcement of fireworks! All is cleared up; he removes the announcement and the coat gets wet no more!”
Chopin, writing in a letter to his family, from Vienna, 14 May 1831.
“Dear Wiluś,
Thanks for remembering me; but on the other hand I am annoyed with you, at you are such a mean and horrid etcetera and only write a scrap to me. Were you short of paper or pens, or did you grudge the ink? Perhaps you had no time to do more than put in a scrawl? Eh, eh, that's it; you go horseback riding, enjoying yourself, and forget about me - Well, well,; give me a kiss and I'll forgive you.
I'm glad you're well and jolly, for that's what is wanted in the country.”
Chopin, writing in a letter to his friend Wilhelm Kolberg.
“Oh, before I forget; I shall probably need to take a little more money from Peter's bank than Papa intended...”
Chopin, writing in a letter.
“...a kind of disposition to be made of my stuff in the future, if I should drop dead somewhere...”
Chopin, describing his will in a letter to his friend Wojciech Grzymała.
“All the same it is being said everywhere that I played too softly, or rather, too delicately for people used to the piano-pounding of the artists here. I expect to find this reproach in the paper, especially as the editor's daughter thumps frightfully.”
“The public only wanted to hear the waltzes of Lanner and Strauss.”
Chopin, writing in a letter, referring to the audiences in Vienna.
“Paris is sick.”
Chopin, writing in a letter to Solange Clésinger.
“The calm of Paris was not disturbed in those days even though some riots were expected due to the mobility guards, which were rationed, or because of the ministry's project to dissolve the clubs. …there were soldiers and cannons everywhere, and this strong attitude impressed those who would like to provoke disorder.”
Chopin, writing in a letter.
“...Like steam.”
Chopin, describing how he felt during an episode of illness and visions.
“You either play my pieces the way they’re written, or you don’t play them at all.”
Chopin, telling Liszt to not ruin any more of his pieces with artificial cadenzas.
“Then I pay visits, return home at dusk, curl my hair, change my shoes, and go out for the evening; about ten, eleven, or sometimes midnight, - never later - I come back, play, weep, read, look, laugh, go to bed, put the light out...”
Chopin, describing his daily life.
“When one does a thing, it appears good, otherwise one would not write it. Only later comes reflection, and one discards or accepts the thing. Time is the best censor, and patience a most excellent teacher.”
Chopin, on how to compose.
“To be a great composer, one needs an enormous amount of knowledge, which...one does not acquire from listening only to other people's works, but even more from listening to one's own.”
Chopin, on how to compose.
“...can’t imagine what it’s like; but as people here think a lot of him (they can’t see beyond neckties), one has to be chums with him. Most of all he enrages me with his collection of pothouse tunes; senseless, vilely accompanied, put together without the slightest knowledge of harmony or prosody, with contradanse cadences; these he calls a collection of Polish songs.”
Chopin, writing (rudely) in a letter on Robert Schumann, and Schumann's "Polish songs".
“Bach is like an astronomer who, with the help of ciphers, finds the most wonderful stars... Beethoven embraced the universe with the power of his spirit... I do not climb so high. A long time ago I decided that my universe will be the soul and heart of man.”
Chopin.
“Oh, how hard it must be to die anywhere but in one's birthplace.”
Chopin.
“Music has no fatherland; its homeland is the whole universe.”
Chopin.
“Every difficulty slurred over will be a ghost to disturb your repose later on.”
Chopin.
“Nie uwierzysz, jak dla mnie teraz Warszawa smutna; gdyby nie to, że familia mi uprzyjemnia, to bym nie wysiedział. – A jak to przykro nie mieć pójść do kogo rano, podzielić z nim smutku, radości; jak to niegodziwie, kiedy coś cięży, a nie ma gdzie złożyć. Wiesz, do czego ta aluzja. Fortepianowi gadam to, co bym tobie był nieraz powiedział.”
(“You wouldn't believe how sad Warsaw is for me now; if it were not for my family's devotion, I could not put up with it. – Oh, how miserable it is to not have someone to share your sorrows, [your] joys; how unfair, when your heart is heavy, and you have no place to put it. You know to what I refer. I often tell to my piano what I want to tell to you.”)
Chopin, writing in a letter to his dear friend Tytus Woyciechowski, 3 October 1829.
“I'm a revolutionary; money means nothing to me.”
Chopin.
“Gdy świat Imienin uroczystość głosi Twoich, mój Papo, wszak i mnie przynosi
Radość, z powodem uczuciów złożenia,
Byś żył szczęśliwie, nie znał przykrych ciosów,
Być zawsze sprzyjał Bóg pomyślnych losów,
Te Ci z pragnieniem ogłaszam życzenia.
F. Chopin. Dnia 6 grudnia 1816.”
“Whereas the world proclaims the celebration of your Name-day, my Papa, thus it is also a great joy of mine, occasioned by the expression of heartfelt feelings, to wish you a happy life, that does not know sorrow, nor adversity, that is always blessed by God with good fortune, so these are, longingly expressed, my wishes. F. Chopin. On the 6th day of December, 1816.”
Chopin, aged six, to his father.
“Comme cette toux m'étouffera je vous conjure de faire ouvrir mon corps pour je suis pas enterré vif.”
(“When all this coughing will finally suffocate me, I beg you, please order my body to be opened, so that I will not be buried alive.”)
Chopin's last written words according to legend, scribbled in pencil on a paper, shortly before his death.
“Mon Cher, Envoie-moi un peu de ton Bordeaux. Il faut que je boive aujourd'hui un peu de vin et je n'en ai d'aucune sorte. Mais enveloppe bien la bouteille et n'oublie pas d'y mettre ton cachet, car les porteurs!! Je ne sais à qui tu confieras cet envoi. Comme je suis devenu soupçonneux! Tout à toi C.”
(“My Dear, Send me some of your Bordeaux. I must drink wine today and I do not have any at home. But pack the bottle well and do not forget to mark it with your seal; oh, these messengers! I do not know to whom you will entrust this package. How suspicious have I become! Yours truly, C.”)
Chopin, in a note to Auguste Franchomme in Paris, asking for some good wine to be delievered at Chailot where the composer was spending his summer, August 1849.
“Oh! My dear fellow! You were smoking when you read it!”
Chopin, immediately saying in displeasure, upon opening the manuscript of his Piano Concerto in E Minor Op. 11, which he had once loaned to a friend, whom, knowing Chopin's particularness, was very careful, wearing white gloves to turn the pages, and had returned the manuscript to Chopin without a single mark upon it.
“...nie mam ochoty, żeby we mnie masło owijano...”
(“...I don't have a penchant, for being wrapped in butter...”)
Chopin, protesting the specter of having a portrait made for someone he hardly knew.
“...too much all at once...”
Chopin, expressing his dismay at the being too much appreciated by many people for his talent.
“Wszystko chowałem na deser, a tymczasem nie mam innego deseru, jak tylko uściśnienia najszczersze, bo ja Ciebie tylko mam.”
(“Everything I was hiding for dessert, and I have no other dessert than the most sincere embrace, because I only have you...”)
Chopin, writing in a letter to his dearest friend.
“Podług zwyczaju tutejszego piernikarzy, sklepy do pierników są to sienie obstawione skrzyniami na klucz dobrze zamykanymi, w których rozgatunkowane, w tuziny ułożonepierniki spoczywają....To jest wszystko, co Ci o Toruniu napisać jestem w stanie, może więcej opowiem, ale to tylko Ci napiszę, iż największą impresję, czyli alias wrażenie, pierniki na mnie uczyniły.”
(“According to the custom of gingerbread makers, gingerbread stores are entryways filled with boxes kept under key and lock; in these large wooden boxes gingerbread rests, divided into different types and arranged into dozens....This is all I am able to write to you about Toruń, maybe I'll tell you more, but now I will only write that it was the gingerbread that made on me the greatest impression, or impact.”)
Chopin, writing in a letter to his friend, Jan Matuszyński, discussing, among other things, the cakes he encountered in Toruń, in early August 1825.
“They have married me to Miss Stirling; she might as well marry death.”
Chopin, commenting on the false rumors of his engagement to his student Jane Stirling.
„Biuściku mego do domu nie posyłaj, tylko w szafie zostaw, boby się przelękli.”
(“Don't send my bust home, just leave it in the closet, lest they get frightened.”)
Chopin, writing in a letter, directing that a particular bust of him, made by a famous caricature artist, not be sent to his family and friends at home, as he found it to look unlike himself.
“Chciałeś mego portretu – żebym mógł był ukraść jeden księżniczce Elizie, tobym go był Tobie posłał; dwa razy mię w sztambuchu zrobiła i, ile mi ludzie gadali, bardzo podobnie.”
(“You wanted my portrait – if I could steal one from Princess Eliza, I would send it to you; she did me twice in the album and, as far as people told me, it was very similar.”)
Chopin writing in a letter to his friend Tytus Wojciechowski about the pencil sketches of him made by Princess Elizabeth Radziwiłł during his stay in Antonin in 1829.
“But, Madame...I have eaten so little!”
Chopin, after a particularly pushy hostess asked him to perform for free at the dinner party he was invited to.
“I say what everyone says: I, too, believed it was Chopin!”
Chopin, upon Liszt's asking for his opinion, on the latter's attempt to emulate Chopin's playing for the audience, in the dark; Liszt had asked Chopin to play in complete darkness for the audience, but then swapped places with him, before he touched the piano.
“Yesterday Count Dietrichstein, a personage in touch with the emperor, came on to the stage; he talked a lot with me in French, complimenting me and asking me to stay longer in Vienna. The orchestra cursed at my badly written score and grumbled, right up to the improvisation, after which they added their bravos to the clapping and yells of the whole audience. I see that I have them for me; about other artists I don't know yet; but they ought not to be hostile, seeing that I did not play for material gain. Thus, my first appearance has…”
Chopin, writing in a letter about his stay in Vienna.
“Tytus’ brother has been here…has told me a lot about Tytus, and I liked him very much…He is a dear and good soul.”
Chopin, writing in a letter about meeting with his friend's brother.
“C?teau! Oh C?teau! My child, tell the whole household at C?teau that I shall never forget my visit in Touraine, —that so much kindness leaves eternal gratitude. People say I have grown fatter and look well, and I feel splendid,”
Chopin, writing in a letter about his stay in Touraine, France.
“...I was yesterday: with this difference, that I have only one whisker; the other refuses and still refuses to grow.”
Chopin, writing in a letter about his only having one sideburn.
“Granted, it is only those espaces imaginaires; but I am not ashamed of that; you know, a proverb has grown up here: —'he went to the coronation by imagination,' and I am a real blind Mazur. So, not seeing far, I have written three...”
(“Granted, it is only those imaginary spaces; but I am not ashamed of that; you know, a proverb has grown up here: —'he went to the coronation by imagination,' and I am a real blind Mazur. So, not seeing far, I have written three...”)
Chopin, writing in a letter about his compositions, and being from Mazury.
“Clésinger brought Solange here, without money, and after a 10-day journey in the heat with the baby... at a moment when everyone is fleeing from here to the country! Where his brains are, I don’t know!! No head; or rather...”
Chopin, writing in a letter about Auguste Clésinger's bringing Solange Clésinger and their baby all the way to visit him.
“…the frogs are pipping delightfully!”
Chopin, writing in a letter.
“…and had a monkey, who bit, other Countesses…”
Chopin, writing in a letter.
“You would not believe how charming my kind pupils are…”
Chopin, writing in a letter to his family, 8 June 1847.
“Give me your hand, my child; I predict that you will become the king of pianists.”
Chopin, after watching Louis Moreau Gottschalk play a concert at the Salle Pleyel in Paris.
“Confound you, vile trumpets!”
Chopin, while blocking his ears after hearing the wind instruments at a concert in Berlin, attended with his teacher Feliks Jarocki, and his friend Oskar Kolberg, and Kolberg's parents, in 1828.